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Category Archives: Red 5

I was able to spend a good chunk of time in Firefall for the open beta weekend – lots of Thumper missions and bounty hunting and upgrading of the Assault and Recon battleframes. I like the easy mechanic of class switching, but I did not get to do as much squad activity as I would have hoped. Like most betas, it mostly consisted of masses of people rampaging around solo, blasting at whatever moves. As a support role, Recon is a hard leveling class to use, especially as most enemies run in herd or squads, but it’s very gratifying to wander across another group getting swarmed and take the pressure off them with a few well-placed cranium-venting rounds.

Overall, I’d say Firefall is a setting that doesn’t take itself too seriously and has a great deal of untapped potential. Some of the mission assignments were glitchy, with stages not proceeding or processing once completed, and the grouping options are left entirely up to the players without much instruction at all. Also, whatever the hell I did to piss off the Terrorfang/Terrorclaw/Terror-Roly-Poly-Deathbugs in the southern reaches of the zone has apparently resulted in a generational genocide pact against my survival for longer than 30 seconds. It reminded me of Stephen Lang’s debriefing speech from Avatar about the dangers of Pandora.

Also, never shoot a Brontodon. EVER.

For those on the WildStar bandwagon, we’ve now met the Draken. They’re mostly a cross between a hyena, a sociopathic goat, and a Klingon, with a bit of Sontaran sprinkled over it for good measure. What a barrel of laughs.